While every year has its challenges, last year, with the rollout of GST from July 1, there was confusion among trade partners and consumers, which reflected in the market sentiment. So just before July, consumers rushed to stores to buy products, and after that, demand cooled down. Last year, even the Diwali period was not that good. Besides, speculations that government will lower GST rate on consumer durables also led consumers to postpone their buying decisions.

But we now expect to see a pick-up in demand. Comparatively, as a company, we did well as we were prepared for these changes and made the transition successfully. Our target has been to grow in double digits annually and we just about achieved our target last year. We will continue to aim to achieve double-digit growth in 2018.

We will keep offering new innovative products to make our consumers’ lives better and not just focus on pushing revenues.

If costs increase, we will have to increase prices to compensate for those costs. Of course, we apply some innovations to minimise the impact on customers, but there is a limit to which we can do that.

I do not understand why the Indian government decided to levy higher customs duty even on key components which are not being produced in India. If these components were being manufactured in India, I would have understood that it was to give incentive to local production. But when there is no local production for such key components, it will only increase costs, and companies have very little headroom to completely absorb these costs. The government needs to foster and support local investment and manufacturing of such key components.

India has sufficient potential to be among the top three markets globally for LG. I am very positive about India because of the government leadership. Introduction of reforms such as demonetisation and GST will help the country adopt global standards and bring in transparency.

LG’s philosophy is to launch products which are based on Indian consumer insights. We will continue to launch new technologies and innovative products to improve consumer’s lifestyle as the Indian market is still a bit behind other advanced markets. We have been focussing on launching more energy-efficient products across categories. We will continue to launch new innovations such as twin-wash washing machine with IoT capabilities.

We have also been looking for new business opportunities based on consumer insights. We looked at the ceiling fans segment and felt while there are products available in the category, the quality is not good. So in June, we will launch three models of ceiling fans. These will be premium products and one of the models will have IoT functionalities. We will focus on creating a differentiator from the products available in the market, and our products will be much easy to use, clean and maintain.

India will be the first country where we will launch these ceiling fans, and these have been designed specifically for the Indian market. We have so far been present only in the premium segment of water purifiers, which is just five per cent of the market. But we are now developing mid-priced water purifiers, which we plan to introduce in March. In the air purifier segment, too, we are getting good demand from corporates, hotels and embassies. We will look at diversifying to introduce more models at lower price points.

Unlike our competitors, we have been investing in the rural market right from the beginning, and we are already very strong in rural regions. The government’s push for rural electrification and affordable housing and other schemes will be beneficial. We will continue to invest in rural regions and develop and train our internal manpower and trade partners in these regions. But consumers in the rural region are not just looking for the cheapest products, but for value-for-money products. We are developing products to match these demands.